Sara Lundberg
When words run out, the great adventure begins. In Ingen utom jag (in English: “No one but me”), author and illustrator Sara Lundberg once again proves why she stands out as one of Sweden’s foremost picture book creators.
Lundberg takes readers – and their reading companions – on a dizzying journey through seriousness, play, and imagination. It’s a coming-of-age experience for the picture book audience, where shared reading moments offer opportunities for discovery. Readers can search for meaning in the details – or simply let themselves be swept away by colour and form. In a book where the text is minimal, the images are expansive. With watercolour and crayon, Lundberg fills the book with both time and space.
Many adults will recognise themselves in the way children’s chatter can sometimes blur into a background hum – while thoughts wander to what to pack for the beach, what to have for dinner, whether anything needs picking up on the way home, and how nice it would be to have a moment to chat with another adult. Lundberg presents a modern mother who recalls figures like the parent in Vilda bebin (not translated into English) or Max’s mother in Till vildingarnas land (“Where the Wild Things Are”, Harper & Row 1963, trans. Maurice Sendak). Here, she wears a bun, a full-bodied presence, and a floral outfit. She is physically close – holding the child’s small hand – but her gaze is elsewhere, directed at other people and other concerns, replying to the child’s questions and demands with absent-minded hums.
Among lily pads and submerged treetops, the release of that hand becomes an opening for the child’s own agency. The narrator steps into the realm of play and imagination, where what first seemed uncertain and strange becomes wild and wondrous. Lundberg masterfully shifts between light and dark, calm and intensity. In sweeping, evocative, yet precise strokes, she paints a voyage around the world – an expedition in which the protagonist discovers both their own greatness and the vastness of the world itself.
With water as a guide, the reader follows the child’s journey. Apartment blocks, dinners, felled forests, real jungles and their jungle children – all have a place in the world of Lundberg’s main character. Through her language and illustrations, Sara Lundberg shows a true sensitivity to the inner life of the child – a world whose floodgates she opens, letting it pour forth like a waterfall for the reader to be carried away by.
Ingen utom jag is nothing short of a triumph in the picture book form. Every spread is a work of art!
Sara Lundberg (born in 1971) studied at Konstfack and the Swedish Royal Institute of Art and is a well-established illustrator and award-winning author, including winning the August Prize twice, most recently in 2017 for the Fågeln i mig flyger vart den vill (not translated into English), which also won the 2017 Snöbollen Prize for Swedish picture book of the year.